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Ubisoft to Enter the Sports Gaming Market

Posted by Zonk on from the french-people-making-football-games dept.

An anonymous reader writes "eToychest has posted news that Ubisoft will be developing a series of sports games. The company has signed an exclusive license with Vijay Singh to produce a Vijay Singh-titled golf game. Ubisoft also announced that it has acquired the technology, tools and source code shipped in Microsoft Game Studios team sports games, including NHL Rivals, NFL Fever, NBA Inside Drive and MLB Inside Pitch." GamerCentric.com has a quick piece on this as well.

16 comments

  1. Sorry, Annika! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A Vijay Singh golf game? Will it allow female players to play PGA events?

  2. Competition is good.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But UbiSoft is evil in a box.

    They even made a game which would crash my NES.

  3. Sporting debut? by delete · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is this a different Ubisoft from the purveyors of "Pro-Tennis Tour" that graced the Spectrum, Amiga, Atari and PC around 1990?

    And, more importantly, will they be including a purse in this one?

  4. Special Feature by JackBuckley · · Score: 1

    I heard that there will be a cheat code that lets you make some "edits" to the scorecard with a pencil .

    1. Re:Special Feature by blahlemon · · Score: 1

      Thank you, that put a smile on my face. lol

      --
      It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
  5. Employment opportunities? by MBraynard · · Score: 2, Insightful
    MS games ditched this and it was widely assumed because they wanted to lure EA into XBL. EA had probably watched as MS vigorously promoted it's own sports games over Segas for XBL in the last season or two and did not want to be at a disadvantage.

    So what happened to the people working on the sub-par but not 989 bad games for MS? Will this mean that Ubi may re-hire some of them?

    And is this even a good investment considering the recent move by some leagues to go exclusively with one developer (specifically EA using this to kill a superior title at 40% of the cost in SegaSports/Visual Concepts's ESPN NFL 2k5)?

  6. NFL? by OAB_X · · Score: 1

    Did not EA sign an exclusive deal with the NFL meaning that there will be no Ubisoft NFL game? Unless they mean NFL Europe, like anyone cares about the NFL:E league, though EA probably has that locked down too.

    1. Re:NFL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe they'll make a game based off college football. NFL-based games suck these days because every year different teams are good. You don't want to have to think, "ok, I'm playing Super-Great-NFL football 2005, so which teams don't suck?"

      At least with a college football game, the same few schools will always be decent. Plus you even add a "recruiting party" feature with strippers and alcohol. On second thought, focus on that...forget the football part.

    2. Re:NFL? by evilmousse · · Score: 1


      go green bay hackers! go brad furve!

    3. Re:NFL? by AaronBrethorst · · Score: 1

      The Hackers can kiss my ass! I'm a Bikings fan for life!!!!! ;-)

      --
      No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
  7. Ubisoft must be spreading legs for EA early by Red+Moose · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Man this sucks. Ubisoft had a run of pretty good games like Splinter Cell, FarCry and such when a lot of other houses were producing utter shit.

    Google search for EA and Ubisoft

    Now, Ubisoft will redirect resources to most likely making shit repetitive sports games only with "euro" commentators for the soccer games, the skiing games and the rugby games.

    In the end, all we will have will be a recreation of every sports game on the planet on the same engine with updates every year.

    --

    Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better

    1. Re:Ubisoft must be spreading legs for EA early by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      God damn I hate sports games. HATE HATE HATE HATE them.

  8. In Other News... by blueZhift · · Score: 1

    In other news, EA announced its immediate intention to buy the remaining 80% of Ubisoft shares that it does not currently own. EA cited prurient business interests for its decision and denied any intention of monopolizing video game sports titles with the acquisition of Ubisoft. The Guillemot brothers could not be reached for comment.

    Uh, yeah...

    --
    To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
  9. Uh, good for them? by Wraithfighter · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Ubisoft might, repeat, might be able to get their money's worth in the NBA area, since there has yet to be a clear winner in that category.

    And I'm pretty sure that NCAA football hasn't gone exclusive yet, so some money could be made there, but no football and no baseball means they lose out on two of the three biggest sports games.

    That, and Vijay doesn't really have the oooh-ahhh name power that Tiger does. Yeah, he's ranked #1 right now, but still no star power.

    --
    Beyond the Polygons : Because 50,000 polygo
  10. Or maybe...... by Alban · · Score: 1

    this is a total bogus move on Ubi's part to increase its acquisition value?

  11. Competition by thesuperav · · Score: 1

    Well, hopefully these competing products will force the bigger sports developers to improve their products. The sports genre has to some extent stagnated, with only incremental updates being issued each year. Only occasionally does something dramatic occur, like a upgrade of the game engine.